Lazarus

[Eastman51]

After having a small case, crammed to bursting, through multiple builds and having to look at the terrible cable management through all of them; I decided that an overhaul was long since overdue. 

Old case: Corsair 100R - medium sized mid-tower case. Cramped with an ATX board, no PSU shroud (spaghetti everywhere), and very little space behind the motherboard tray.
New case: Fractal Design Define R6 (White TG) - Full size tower case. Lots of space for near any build. Integrated PSU shroud (hidden spaghetti), and tons of cable management space.

Spoiler

PC Specs:

Ryzen 5 2600x

Noctua NH-D15 SE-AM4 (upgrade from Corsair H55 120mm AIO)

16GB DDR4 Corsair Vengeance LPX 3000MHz

Asus STRIX B350-F Gaming

Asus STRIX 1070

Asus Hyper M.2 x16 (4x M.2 NVMe drives) - 1x Samsung 970 EVO 500GB installed

Asus Xonar DGX PCIe 5.1 sound card

EVGA 700B

Samsung 860 EVO 500GB (C:)

Seagate 2TB Firecuda SSHD (2.5" 5400rpm)

Toshiba 1 TB HDD (3.5" 7200 rpm)

Toshiba X300 4TB HDD (3.5" 7200rpm)

NZXT Hue+ USB 2.0 RGB controller

Corsair SPF 120mm (1x Purple LED, 2x w/ rubber mounts)

*Unidentified* DVD/RW Optical drive.

**Peripherals**

Corsair K70 Rapidfire RGB

Corsair MM800 RGB

Corsair ST100 RGB

Corsair Scimitar Pro RGB (yellow version)

Blue Snowball ICE

Sony MDR7506 headphones

Asus AC68 USB 3.0 Wifi adapter

**Displays**

Left Monitor - Asus VS247 23" 1080p 60Hz IPS

Right Monitor - Asus PB258 27" 1440p 60Hz IPS

**Speakers**

'Unknown' JBL sub and PC speakers

'Unknown' Bose PC speakers

*used in 5.1 surround with the DGX*

The Define R6 is a fantastic case. Its very spacious and has plenty of cable management space (even for a cable management noob like me). I still have a spilled bowl of spaghetti under the PSU shroud, but its hidden now and really cleans up the aesthetic. My SATA cables are also managed poorly, but are much harder to notice because of the drive tray and rubber grommet placing. I may relocate my 2.5" Seagate drive into the other PSU shroud mounting position, right now it is behind the motherboard tray. If I got cablemod extensions, or a fully modular PSU, I could tidy up the back a bit; but the extra space means I'm at least not jamming the back panel on anymore. The door at the front also hides the DVD drive and really cleans up the presentation. I'm still thinking about how I'm going to do the RGB setup, I may relocate some of the strips, as well as change the breathe effect to a static purple. I also need to fix my peripheral RGB profile to have a ripple on keypress, but CUE (Corsiar's peripheral software) is a dick 90% of the time and likes to break things. 

 

The NH-D15 lowered my CPU temps by 20 at idle and 15 under load compared to the 120mm AIO I was using in the old case (the AIO was also used in previous builds, so it's also aging). My GPU temps went up a bit at idle and under load, but I suspect it's because of how close the GPU and CPU heatsink are; so there's not much I can do about it. The sound dampening on the R6 panels makes a noticeable difference over my last case, and the lack of pump noise from the NH-D15 makes my PC now whisper quiet, even under full load (except for the Asus NVMe expansion card's integrated fan. If I leave that on, my PC gets quite loud. Turning off increases the 970 EVO's temps by a few C. It's a good trade off because the card's heatsink keeps the 970 EVO cool enough without it).

 

I did not take any pictures during disassembly and reassembly process, but I did take some before and after shots. (Sorry for the poor, extremely bad, lighting on the before shots. I messed up some settings on my camera, they're better in the after shots; but I'm not a photographer so they're still not that great).

Before:

Spoiler

After:

Spoiler

All pictures were taken with my, antiquated, Sony DSC-R1 camera. Which, imo, still takes pretty good pictures (if you don't screw up the settings, lmao). I used the stock Win10 Photos app to lighten the before pics a bit (they were super dark originally, can't see anything).